No Kiss For The Devil

5

‘You’re late.’ Alex Koutsatos, the proprietor of MailBox Services, a mail forwarding business, waited impatiently on the doorstep of his shop as a delivery driver heaved a large cardboard box out of his van and dumped it on the pavement. The van usually arrived at six am, before most of the surrounding businesses were open and Koutsatos still had the street more or less to himself. Now it was nearly nine and he was already anxious. Too many around here were interested in other people’s business. Deliveries often attracted attention, and attention was something he and his customers preferred to avoid.

‘Mains burst in Aldgate,’ the driver muttered shortly, and held out an electronic pad and stylus for a signature.

Koutsatos scribbled as directed and waved the driver away. He would have to leave the main splitting up of the parcel until this evening now, when it was quiet. Maybe even tomorrow. This was a bigger consignment than usual, and couldn’t be rushed.

Of mixed Armenian and Ukrainian parentage, Koutsatos had done many things in his life, most of them confined to the darker recesses of his memory. Born in a charity hospital in the northern Black Sea port of Odessa, his life had been at an all-time low and his prospects zero, when he had been shown how to gain entry to the UK. The papers, he had been assured, would pass the closest inspection — for a while. As he had discovered later, this was because the original owner, a predatory homosexual on holiday from Glasgow, was now buried in an unmarked grave in Tangiers.

In return for the freedom, independence and a home in London, Koutsatos had agreed to eventually assume a Greek name and to set up a mail forwarding shop in the capital. There was one major condition involved: he would be called on from time to time to assist in the movement of papers, parcels and, just occasionally, people.

Koutsatos dragged the box inside the shop. It was heavy and he was soon out of breath. Fortunately, there were no customers around. He had just enough time to check the contents and make sure the labels were included. He worked in silence, using a lethal-looking fisherman’s knife to slice through the heavy-duty tape and bindings. He found the packing list and made up five of the largest bundles, putting them to one side. These would be collected by a motorcycle courier for onward delivery to Heathrow. He never studied the contents of the packages, and had never queried — out loud, at least — why they were so important. But once, a careless slash of his knife had ripped into one of them, and he had disposed of the damaged item carefully in the yard behind the shop, in a small brazier.

Somehow, the idea that a few magazines could be so important had never ceased to amaze him.

Ray Szulu stood outside the Arrivals exit at Heathrow’s Terminal Four, holding a cardboard sign. He was engaged in a silent battle of wits with a security guard in a suit and a couple of armed policemen. He’d been hanging about for nearly an hour now, waiting on a delayed flight, and was getting annoyed. Being stared at by a couple of uniforms with guns wasn’t so much of a problem — he’d been there before many times — but the pushy suit’s attitude was getting him down.

‘You’ve got a double pick-up,’ his control had told him over the phone two hours earlier. ‘Outside Terminal Four, not inside, right? Don’t be late.’ The man’s Nigerian accent had rumbled over the airwaves like crushed concrete falling down a wooden chute, making it hard for Szulu to pick out every word. God knows, he thought sourly, what anyone else made of it. He’d just about caught the description and names of the two passengers, and the central London hotel they had to be taken to, before the call had ended. There was also no explanation as to why he had to wait outside, but he wasn’t about to waste time arguing. He suspected they had probably travelled here by car from somewhere else. If so, it was their business.

Szulu worked mostly as a part-time driver for a couple of west London cab firms. He drove limousines when he could get the work, mini-cabs when nothing else offered. And in between, he tried to stay out of trouble.

Right now, though, he was being stared at as if he was about to do something illegal. He knew the cops were only doing their job and protecting the masses, but why were they giving him the snake’s eyes? He wasn’t carrying anything suspicious, and he was dressed in a smart suit with a peaked cap, even if the dreadlocks hanging round his collar didn’t quite fit the image of a regular driver.

He sighed and took another turn along the pavement, skirting a bunch of inbound tourists waiting for their lift, and a straggly line of luggage trolleys abandoned by previous arrivals.

He passed the security guard, who was trying to look tough and failing, and caught sight of his own reflection in the glass doors behind him.

Szulu was tall, slim and walked with an athletic spring in his step and a roll to his shoulders. It was a gait he’d developed twenty years ago in his early teens, when strutting your stuff was more than just for show; it was survival. Back then, he’d been tall for his age, but skinny, and therefore still liable to be a target for the wrong sort of attention. So he’d done what all his contemporaries had done, and taken to looking tough. Most of the time it had worked, helped by having big, useful-looking hands and a hollow stare. Since then, he’d put on a few pounds and learned a few moves to back up the image.

He shook his head, setting the dreadlocks swinging. The beads clicked quietly, but he didn’t notice them anymore. What he did notice, though, was the nagging ache in his left arm. It had healed over long ago, but every now and then, warm or cold, it seemed determined to serve him up with a nagging reminder.

He wondered what the security drone and the two armed cops would say if they knew he carried the scar from a genuine bullet wound. The idea made him smile. They might have their suspicions of him because of the way he looked, but it would prove that they didn’t know anything about him.

When he turned, he was relieved to see a couple of men standing outside the doors, looking around. Slim briefcases, suits, no coats. He held up his cardboard sign and received a nod in acknowledgement.

Thank Christ, he thought, and smirked at the two cops on his way to the car. ‘Hang loose, guys,’ he told them cheerfully. ‘You doin’ a good job.’